TOOLS AND RESOURCES

My Recommended Tools to Rock Your Business

When starting, growing and scaling any business, there are so many tools that can make your life easier, improve your efficiency while increasing the ROI on your time.

However, there are also a lot of distractions out there. You know, that whole “Bright Shiny Object Syndrome”.

Well, after being a guinea pig for many of these shiny objects, here are the ones that I would 100% recommend. Why? Because I actually use them on a daily basis!

Note: Some of the links that I share below are affiliate links. What does this mean you ask? It’s simply a way for the service provider to throw me a nominal fee as a way of saying “Thank You” for promoting their cool stuff. This does not increase the price to you at all. If anything, you get a better deal than the general consumer. Cool?

COMMUNICATION

Slack– The BEST communication tool for any team (in my opinion). It’s one of those things that you didn’t know you needed until you had it…and then don’t understand how you could live without it. A GREAT way to build an open, transparent team environment. Cost: FREE

ActiveCampaign – If you’re not building a list, you’re leaving tens of thousands of dollars on the able. ActiveCampaign is a great email marketing, automation and small business CRM…and it starts out at just $9/month!

ScheduleOnce – Don’t you hate going back and forth via phone, email and text to try and set up a time to meet or chat with someone? Make everyone’s life easier with ScheduleOnce.

Calendly – Similar to ScheduleOnce, Calendly is another great option depending on your preference. I prefer Calendly for their free version and ScheduleOnce for their paid verson.

GSuite – Are you still rocking a Gmail, Hotmail or even worse AOL email address for your business? It’s time to step up your game and be a professional business! With GSuite by Google, you can get your own email address at your own domain for $5/month…and it works just like Gmail. Easy, peezy, lemon squeezy.

WEBSITE STUFF

GoDaddy – Where I go to buy all of my domains. Easy to use, good interface and there are always coupons and discounts floating around out there :).

SiteGround – Every website needs a host…and there are a lot of options out there! After trying more than one, I have found SiteGround to be the best – from the interface, support, pricing and speed, I’m a fan!

OptimizePress – Unless you’re a master coder (I’m not), your website needs some sort of theme too. If you’re on WordPress, I recommend OptimizePress. It’s easy-to-use, drag and drop with a ton of great resources and videos to help.

PHOTO/VIDEO TOOLS

Camtasia – When it comes to creating Standard Operating Procedures and training videos (so you can delegate), Camtasia is a great option to do so. A screen recording & video editing software, it’s easy to use!

SnagIt – The “Print Screen” button is so 1990’s! With SnagIt, you can capture a picture of your screen in order to create your SOP’s, manuals and training aids.

Canva – The easiest way to start editing photos and creating snazzy graphics (like the one over there <—). Canva is a free tool with lots of options to help you make your stuff more pretty :).

Wistia – Have some videos that you want to share but not sure how to do it (other than YouTube)? Wistia is a great option to host and share videos whether it’s for your website, students or customers.

Vimeo – Very similar to Wistia, I recommend checking out Vimeo as well to see which one fits your fancy.

organization

Evernote – A convenient place to keep all of your notes in one place; whether it’s your desktop, laptop, tablet or phone, it’s all synced up and accessible. Cost: FREE!

CardKeeper App – What do you do with all of those business cards people give you? Download the CardKeeper app to scan and store all of them in one convenient place – your phone!

Dropbox – You no longer have to say “I wish I was at home to access that document on my computer”. With Dropbox you can store and access your documents anywhere…even your phone!

GSuite – Because it’s more than just email, GSuite gets another mention here. With too many functions to name, just go check it out!

automate & delegate

Fiverr – We all have those certain things that we hate doing, that take too long or we just don’t know how to do them…so we don’t! With Fiverr, you are connected with people all around the world competing to do your work for as little as $5!

FreeeUp – Ready to step up your game beyond the “gig economy”. With FreeeUp, you can find your perfect Virtual Assistant while FreeeUp does all of the heavy lifting. Find someone to work for you for as little as one hour per day!

Buffer – Buffer is a FREE social media scheduler. Now, I don’t recommend it for all platforms but if you are a Twitter user, Buffer is great to schedule & automate your posts.

Quickbooks – Although most of us don’t like doing the books, they have to be done! And with Quickbooks, you can automate most of the work. With automatic downloads, real time feeds, payroll and more, Quickbooks saves time while improves accuracy.

Delighted – The best way to improve and grow your business is with customer feedback…especially negative feedback :). Delighted surveys all of your customers automatically while utilizing the Net Promoter Score concept. A game changer for any business.